Lincoln's Mentors

by Michael J. Gerhardt

  McClellan’s constant requests for more men and resources with no apparent plan for using them was testing everyone’s patience. On January 10, 1862, Lincoln called a meeting of top generals and directed them to formulate a plan of attack. Claiming illness, McClellan refused to attend. Lincoln told the council, “If General McClellan did not want to use the army, [I] would like to borrow it.”23 When word reached McClellan that Lincoln was moving ahead with plans without him, he came to Washington and met with Lincoln and the other generals on January 12. Reluctantly, McClelland revealed—for the first time to Lincoln—his plan of attack. It entailed transporting the Army of the Potomac by ships to Urbanna, Virginia, on the Rappahannock River, for the purpose of outflanking the Confederate forces near Washington. From there, McClellan explained, the army would proceed to capture Richmond. Even when pressed, McClellan refused to give any further details to either Lincoln or his newly appointed secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.

  Though pleased that McClellan had a plan, both Lincoln and Stanton were dubious. On January 27, 1862, Lincoln issued General Order No. 1, which specified that the “Land and Naval forces” should move “against the insurgent forces” on or before February 22.24 Four days later, Lincoln issued a supplemental order directing the Army of the Potomac to move against the railroad supplying the Southern forces gathering at Manassas, Virginia, south of the national capital, on or before the same date. McClellan replied with a twenty-two-page letter objecting in detail to the president’s plan and defending his own. By early March, McClellan and his superiors were at a standstill, and no engagement had yet occurred. Frustrated, Lincoln told a congressman, “If General Washington, or Napoleon, or General Jackson were in command on the Potomac they would be obliged to move or resign the position.”25

  Lincoln was hardly the only one whose patience had run out. Often during his visits to the White House, Browning scanned the battle maps lying around while Lincoln reviewed news from the front. They frequently talked about Lincoln’s difficulty in finding the right general to lead Union forces and particularly about McClellan. Browning was present when Lincoln was visited by the members of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, formed in December 1861, to tell Lincoln to push McClellan harder or fire him. After tepidly defending McClellan, Lincoln agreed. McClellan’s friend and ally Edwin Stanton agreed, too.

  McClellan had been overjoyed by the news of Stanton’s appointment, which he had hailed as “a most unexpected piece of good fortune.”26 After just a few days in office, however, Stanton had a remarkable turnaround after seeing for himself how McClellan had mismanaged the situation. At the time, he wrote the president, “As soon as I can get the machinery of office going, the rats cleared out, and the rat holes stopped, we shall move. This army has got to fight or run away.”27 He added, “[The] champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.”28 On March 11, Lincoln met with his Cabinet, which agreed to end McClellan’s short tenure as the commanding general of the Union forces. Lincoln told McClellan his dismissal was necessary so as to devote attention to leading the Army of the Potomac to rebuff Lee’s invasion of Maryland.

  Despite McClellan’s mixed results, Lincoln named McClellan on September 12, 1862, to command “the fortifications of Washington, and all the troops for the defense of the capital.”29 A majority of the Cabinet sharply disagreed, declaring “our deliberate opinion that, at this time, it is not safe to entrust Major General McClellan the command of any of the armies of the United States.”30 Lincoln, backed by Browning and Stanton, felt that no one could do the job better than McClellan. The final clash between McClellan’s forces and Lee’s occurred at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. The fight was a draw, after which Lee withdrew to the South.

  Shortly after visiting an openly disrespectful McClellan on the battlefield in October, Lincoln had had enough. He ordered Stanton to remove McClellan from command entirely. Upon receiving the message of dismissal from Stanton, McClellan swore to his wife that Lincoln and Stanton “have made a grave mistake.”31 When the old political warrior from Missouri Frank Blair visited Lincoln on November 6, 1862, to protest McClellan’s removal from general command of the Union’s forces, Lincoln told Blair, “I said I would remove him if he let Lee’s army get away from him, and I must do so. He has got the ‘slows,’ Mr. Blair.”32 Just as Taylor had used his dismissal as a platform to run for president, McClellan did the same. Once he was out from under Lincoln’s command, he began assembling his own run for the presidency. He would be Taylor to Lincoln’s Polk.

  Lincoln struggled to maintain a good working relationship with members of Congress, many of whom fervently believed that they, not Lincoln, knew best how to win the war. The conflicts came to a head near the end of 1861.

  In two long caucus meetings on December 16 and 17, Republican senators voted to press for a reorganization of Lincoln’s Cabinet to secure “unity of purpose and action.”33 They were outraged over the outcome of the Battle of Fredericksburg, fought December 11–15, 1861, during which the Army of the Potomac incurred casualties three times as heavy as those incurred by Lee’s forces. The senators blamed Seward for the debacle. This conveniently dovetailed with Treasury Secretary Chase’s eagerness to get rid of Seward, who, Chase kept telling them, wielded too much influence over Lincoln, just as had he done over Taylor.

  When he was a member of the House, Lincoln had urged transparency and candor upon the White House. But he would not allow himself, any more than Polk ever did, to be subservient to the House or Senate or a small band of senators, even if from his own party. On the evening of December 16, a messenger, accompanied by Senator Preston King of New York, brought to him a curt letter of resignation from Seward. Seward’s son, Frederick, included his resignation as an assistant secretary of state. Lincoln rushed to Seward’s house. Seward and his son were packing for their return to New York. Seward was adamant that Lincoln accept his letter of resignation in order to ease relations within the Cabinet and between the president and Congress. Lincoln strongly disagreed and urged Seward to stop packing. He asked Seward to keep the matter confidential until he had a chance to address the charges of discord in the Cabinet. Seward reluctantly agreed.

  On the afternoon before the evening of his scheduled visit with the Senate delegation on December 18, Lincoln met with Browning, who reported what had happened during the Senate caucus meetings on the two days prior. Browning explained that he had defended Lincoln and Seward during the meetings, and that had Lincoln “caved in” and accepted Seward’s resignation, he would have risked losing control over his administration.34 Browning encouraged Lincoln to consider reorganizing his Cabinet. Lincoln listened, but regardless of the merits, the brewing insurrection within the members of his own party in the Senate infuriated him. He nearly shouted at Browning, “What do these men want?”35 Lincoln then answered his own question. “They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them. . . . Since I heard last night of the proceedings of the caucus I have been more distressed than by any event of my life.”36 Lincoln confided, “We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me that the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope.”37

  When the senators arrived at the White House that evening, Lincoln had devised a plan. He kept the news of Seward’s letter to himself. Once inside with the caucus, Lincoln listened patiently to the senators’ complaints “attributing to Mr. S[eward] a lukewarmness in the conduct of the war, and seeming to consider him the real cause of our failures.”38 Benjamin Wade of Ohio blamed Lincoln for entrusting the conduct of the war to “men who had no sympathy with it or with the cause.”39 Wade further blamed Republican defeats in the recent midterm elections on the fact that the president had placed the direction of military affairs “in the hands of bitter and malignant Democrats.”40 William Fessenden of Maine added “that the Cabinet were not consulted as a council—in fact, that many important measures were decided upon not only without consultation,
but without the knowledge of its members.”41 Fessenden denounced Seward for undue influence over the war’s management and McClellan for being “pro-slavery,” “sympath[izing] strongly with the Southern feeling,” and unfairly blaming the administration for its failing to support the army.42

  At this point, Lincoln interrupted. After years of experience in trying cases and in debating formidable foes, Lincoln had no intention of letting the opposition pull off a filibuster with no rebuttal; he had never allowed that to happen in court, and he would not allow it here. Producing a large stack of papers, he slowly read for more than half an hour the letters that he had written to McClellan to demonstrate his long-standing commitment to helping him and the war effort. His recitation caught the senators by surprise; they had no ready response. Without committing himself, the president invited the senators back the next evening, and they agreed.

  The first thing the next morning, Lincoln assembled his Cabinet with the exception of Seward. He informed them of Seward’s resignation and the visit from the group of nine senators representing the Republican caucus. “While they believed in the President’s honesty,” he told them, “they seemed to think that when he had in him any good purposes Mr. S[eward] contrived to suck them out of him unperceived.”43 Lincoln asked the Cabinet to return that evening “to have a free talk.”44

  When everyone arrived at seven thirty that evening, both the senators and Cabinet members, sans Seward, were surprised; neither group had had any idea that the other was coming. With senators and Cabinet members sitting uncomfortably across the table from each other, Lincoln delivered a long statement, commenting “with some mild severity” on the resolutions presented the evening before by the senators and explaining that whenever possible he consulted the Cabinet about important decisions but that he alone made the decisions, especially on matters of military strategy and command.45 He said that members of his Cabinet sometimes disagreed but all supported a policy once it was decided, that he was “not aware of any divisions or want of unity,” and that Seward was a valuable member of his administration.46 Then Lincoln turned to the Cabinet members and asked them “whether there had been any want of unity or of sufficient consultation.”47

  Lincoln did not have to say what everyone present already understood, that he had just put Chase on the spot. Lincoln was aware that Chase had been the one who told the senators that Seward was the main source of all the problems in the Cabinet. Lincoln understood that if Chase now agreed with Lincoln, he would lose face with the senators who were present, but if Chase disagreed openly with the president, he would then lose the president’s confidence. With all eyes on him, Chase took a moment to compose himself. He began defensively by saying “that he should not have come here had he known that he was to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate.”48 With everyone waiting for more, Chase grudgingly agreed “that questions of importance had generally been considered by the Cabinet, though perhaps not so fully as might have been desired” and that there was no want of unity in the Cabinet.49 The meeting went on until one in the morning, but no one left thinking there would be any change in the Cabinet.

  Much embarrassed, Chase came to the White House the next day to submit his resignation. “I brought it with me,” said Chase.50 “Let me have it,” Lincoln said, as he took the letter from Chase.51 “This . . . cuts the Gordian knot,” he said. “I can dispose of this subject now.”52 When Stanton, who had asked to be present, offered his own resignation letter to allay fears that senators were most concerned about the lack of progress in the war, Lincoln swiftly declined and ordered him to “go to your Department. I don’t want yours.”53 He placed both in his desk.

  In recounting the developments later to Senator Ira Harris of New York, Lincoln shared an anecdote about the time when he was a boy and had learned how to carry pumpkins while riding horseback. “I can ride on now. I’ve got a pumpkin in each end of my bag,” he told the senator.54 Lincoln had letters of resignation from his two most ambitious and meddling Cabinet secretaries—Seward and Chase—in hand, but he had no present intent to cash in on either. Later, he told Browning that he felt that he had shown that “he was master” of his administration and the senators “should not” have attempted to seize control of his Cabinet.55

  A year after the Cabinet crisis of December 1862, Lincoln told John Hay, “I do not see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward the thing would all have slumped over one way and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase sent in his resignation I saw that the game was in our hands and I put it through.”56 In the intervening months, before Lincoln made that comment to Hay, he and his Cabinet had addressed an even larger challenge in 1863—deciding whether the objective of the war was to maintain the Union, abolish slavery, or both.

  IV

  * * *

  Settling on the objective of the war proved nearly as vexing for Lincoln as figuring out how to end the conflict. In his Inaugural Address, Lincoln had declared that the preservation of the Union was the war’s objective—that and nothing more. He later explained that preserving the Union meant guaranteeing all Americans the freedom to become self-made men, on whatever terms they wished.

  Lincoln appreciated both the legal and political problems with that objective. Lincoln was unsure whether the North could remain unified if the Union’s fate turned on abolishing slavery. As a constitutional matter, it was unclear after the Dred Scott decision how far the federal government could go in regulating slavery. Was it barred from doing anything? Could it abolish slavery in the states, or at least the District of Columbia? Could it take intermediate steps, such as abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia or perhaps arrange funding to buy slaves and send them to Africa? Or was it required to allow slavery to spread without interference?

  As Lincoln’s presidency progressed, Radical Republicans and the members of the congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War argued that the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery were intertwined. This raised other important but more technical questions: Did the president have inherent authority over the spread of slavery or status of those deemed slaves in the South, and to what extent did the president require congressional support or authorization to take any action, even as commander in chief, to interfere with slavery? As president, Lincoln worked through these questions step by step, and oftentimes with congressional approval or acquiescence, on a path that led him to issue one of the most famous executive actions in American history. In retrospect, the journey was not surprising. Through it all, Lincoln kept faith with the ideals he’d professed for decades as a Clay Whig.

  The first step did not require Lincoln’s participation at all. In fact, it was taken in the opposite direction of emancipation. In March 1861, Lincoln had insisted in his First Inaugural Address that the war’s objective was to maintain the Union and pledged not to interfere with the institution wherever it existed. The next day Confederates routed Union forces in the First Battle of Bull Run.

  On July 25, 1861, all but a handful of senators voted in favor of a resolution sponsored by Representative John Crittenden of Kentucky (he entered the House after running unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1860) and Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only senator from a seceded state who remained loyal to the United States and remained in Congress after the Civil War began. The resolution affirmed that the war was being fought not for the purpose of “overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States,” but only “to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union.”57

  The second step toward emancipation occurred a few weeks later. On August 6, Congress passed the First Confiscation Act. The law authorized the federal government to seize the property of all those participating directly in rebellion. The law purposefully avoided specifying the permanent future status of confiscated slaves, but few expe
cted that they would be returned to slavery. Without comment, Lincoln signed the bill into law. Privately, he told Browning, who had voted for it, that “the government neither should, nor would send back to bondage such as came to our armies.”58 Lincoln’s position might have reflected the fact that as a former Whig he was prepared to approve laws that were not clearly unconstitutional and that this law, in any event, was consistent with the long-standing international law of war, which authorized the seizure of any property, including slave property. Also, the confiscation of slaves was a move long considered and contemplated among Whigs like Clay, for years, though they had envisioned the possibility of compensating slaveholders. With war, such financial niceties were no longer on the table.

  The next step toward emancipation occurred shortly after Lincoln had signed the First Confiscation Act. Lincoln had assigned John Frémont, as head of the Department of the West, to clear Missouri of secessionists. On August 30, 1861, Frémont issued a proclamation in which he implemented martial law in the state of Missouri and ordered the confiscation of property, including slaves, of those who were resisting the Union. The reverberations of his proclamation were felt all the way back to Washington, where Lincoln countermanded Frémont’s declaration on September 11, 1861. Lincoln had many problems with Frémont’s proclamation. One was his conviction that the action breached the chain of command; Lincoln believed any such order should have become from the president, not a general, assuming that the president even had the power to do so. Lincoln ordered Frémont to revise his proclamation to conform to the Confiscation Act.